In his encyclopedia on the history of science, the great historian George Sarton says: "Arabic was the language of science and the progress of mankind in the second half of the eighth century until the end of the eleventh century AD, it is enough to pay tribute to some of the bright names that were not matched in the West, such as Jaber Ibn Hayyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Farazi, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra and al-Battani ... If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, then mention these men to them.
Question of evolution in Islam
When we talk about that golden period in the history of Islamic civilization, you must come up with some interesting questions to your brain little by little, you will say at the beginning: Why did this happen? How do you progress? This will lead you to the most important question: Is their belief incompatible with the scientific knowledge they have acquired? In fact, the relationship of the modern Arab world with science was completely overwhelmed by these kinds of questions, but although Muslims in those times did not find a clear contradiction between their study of science and their beliefs, the exact opposite is happening now, where many see modern science, or some Its products, directly contrary to the Islamic religion.
At first glance, you might think that this is about the nature of science itself. The science of these golden ages may be an Islamic one, but science is now a Western science, but with a pondering look at the achievements of Islamic science in those times, in mathematics, physics and chemistry, you will find that they are, in general, unrelated Persons' beliefs or do not bear the character of those beliefs. For example, the mathematical problems confronted by Muslims were no different from those of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Greeks, etc. In his book Islam and Science, Pervez Amir Ali Bayoud, a Pakistani physicist with a Ph.D. The MIT Institute, which is interested in the history of science in Islamic civilization, has a full chapter to illustrate that point in other scientific domains.
So it may be something else, but what? Could some of the recent achievements of modern science, which did not exist then, be incompatible with the Islamic religion? One of the most famous contemporary examples of the idea of direct conflict between religion and science is, no doubt, the issue of evolution, which has continued to ignite intellectual fires from time to time for decades to the moment you read these words. Far beyond Darwin.
In fact, the idea of evolution by natural selection was common in Islamic heritage and circulated among Muslim thinkers at the time, according to a study published in the eighties of the last century, entitled "The idea of evolution at the philosophers of Islam," which examined the author, Dr. Magdy Abdel Hafez Professor of Philosophy at Helwan University, The apparent convergence between Darwinian evolution and the ideas of the Ikhwan al-Safa, Muskawy, and al-Biruni, inspired by Indian heritage, and Ibn Khaldun, precisely about biological evolution.
Contemporary examples
So what's the problem? The prevailing idea, which you see on social media massively these days, and heard in conversation between friends and colleagues at the university, says that there is a direct link between evolution and atheism, atheists are those who talk and promote evolutionary biology. But this idea is far from right. There are contemporary Arab scientists - who specialize in their ranges - see the exact opposite, let us start, for example, Dr. Sami Mohamed Zalat, professor of biodiversity at the University of Suez Canal, in the introduction to the book "Why evolution really?", Which began by saying:
"The word evolution is not a substitute for the word creator"
This point is very important, because some proponents of this contradiction between evolutionary biology and Islam, or religion in general, begin to portray the fact that scientists put evolution in one hand and God in the other, which means that the proponent of evolutionary biology and its defender is often polytheistic. "You can be religious and believe in evolution," Zalat continues, explaining that evolution is the scientific and logical explanation for the diversity and formation in this life, then explains that he did not find a contradiction in what he read with his beliefs as a Muslim. , Because his mind is fed by science and knowledge, his heart and spirit Mmluan by faith in God.
On the other hand, Dr. Ahmed Shawky Hassan, Professor of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, in his book "Three scientific stories", explains that the sharp anti-religious attitude of some evolutionary biologists and promoters, such as Huxley old and now Richard Dawkins, gave an opportunity The idea of linking evolution to atheism is popular, but Shawki explains that there is a clear difference between science, specifically evolutionary biology, and religion, and asks the reader not to mix papers. Science is based on conviction and testing. Religion is based on faith and certainty, and there is no confusion or overlap between the two approaches. , The importance of both in Hey man. Then he finishes by saying:
"We are preparing the Sunnah of evolution in His creation, studying His mechanisms, and constantly correcting our understanding of them."
In a third version of the same view, Dr. Mustafa Ibrahim Fahmy, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical chemistry from the University of London in 1969 and one of the most famous Arab translators, in his introduction to the book "The Greatest Review Above the Earth", said that "it is not valid to assess science or religion Assessing religion by science, '' he said, adding that religious texts are not a reference in biology or other sciences.There are no Christian physics, Islamic physics, and pagan physics.Fehmi cites the example of the believer Fischer and the atheist religion, two world-renowned scientists in evolutionary biology, each of which has its own work in this domain.
Students and evolution
The history of promoting against evolution, and linking it to colonialism, imperialism, the West, atheism, materialism, and racism, put the speakers of evolution automatically in a very poor stereotype
Dr. Rana Dajani, a Jordanian cell biologist with a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Iowa, said in an article in the well-known journal Nature that Muslim university students' rejection of evolutionary biology is an "opportunity." Although they enter the classroom rejecting and totally hostile to this scientific realm, by the end of the semester most of them have accepted the idea. From this point of view, a Muslim student is able to confront and accept controversial academic ideas, and thus is also able to research the rest of his life, without blind delivery.
She points to another important point about stereotyping. Students see her as a veiled Muslim and then stand before them to say that evolutionary biology is the scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, and they are immediately shocked. Let us consider here an important problem, along with the misconception prevalent among the citizens of the Arab world, that evolution is a substitute for God (we talked about it earlier), the history of promoting against development, and linking it with colonialism, imperialism, the West, atheism, materialism, racism, Automatically putting evolutionists into a very bad stereotype, so Dajani and other Muslim scholars interested in evolutionary biology are particularly shocking to students, because students come to universities confident that the speaker is atheist or at least has a critical problem with his beliefs. , One word!
On the other hand, Dr. Nidal Kassoum, an Algerian astrophysicist who holds a doctorate and a master's degree from the University of California, joins a group of Arab scientists who believe that there is no conflict between religion and science in the issues of evolution. This project can be applied by all religious sects, but I do not address it here except in terms of Islam, because it is religious. ”
Indeed, in his aforementioned book, Qassoum develops his thesis on religion and science to say that, despite the systematic and complete independence between the two domains of science and religion, there is a degree of harmony between them, and is not here to mean that the Koran is a biological book or that it tells scientific facts or that There is some kind of overlap between the two domains, but he believes that modern science has been unable to find meaning for many of his discoveries, because that is not his specialty, and therefore can help religion to find this meaning in a framework that believes in God.
Religion and science
We can continue to set examples of Arab and Muslim scholars, who see no contradiction between evolution and Islam, and do not end before we fill a whole book of interesting ideas. They all agree that there is no conflict between religion and science in general. You might say that these are special cases, but in fact this idea is finding resonance on a global scale. For example, most researchers working in the field of "science and religion", a contemporary philosophical research, that there is no clear conflict between the two bands or their products, it is the same opinion agreed by the Quartet, which we have just talked about, in fact, the less acceptable opinion in this Scope is that of conflict between science and religion, both in general and at special points.
In fact, Alvin Plantinga, the well-known American analytical philosopher, argues that the conflict is not essentially between religion and science, but between religion and natural philosophy, which is a very important separation between “science” and “philosophy that uses, builds upon or builds on science”, because Many in our societies talk about science to a large extent confusing it with philosophy. Some say, for example, that there is an "atheistic science." In fact, science itself is not atheistic or faith-based, but there can be a philosophy that does, to understand that idea. The view of Stephen Jay Gold, a well-known biological.
| Stephen Jay Gold (Networking) |
In his book "The Rocks of Time," Gold explains that it is not essentially a struggle between science itself and religion itself, but perhaps a struggle between scientists and clerics. Gould sets an example in the famous Galileo trial, which people often talk about in their debates about the struggle for science and religion. The story begins from the Thirty Years' War, during a state of turmoil, and at a time when the popes had absolute powers of administration and fatwas, Galileo came up with his revolutionary ideas.
Gold says that at that point we cannot say that what happened with Galileo was only related to the problems of religion and science, because in the current political context, when someone threatened the church's policies at a time when it was facing criticism from many points, it was The Galileo affair is expected to turn into a highly influential trial.Gold, of course, does not attempt to justify the Church's disgraceful position and the severe insult to Galileo.However, he criticizes that state of media use for something that is so complex and historically significant that it is only a clear picture of the conflict between religion and science throughout history.
From this point of view, the history of the conflict between religion and science is mistakenly understood as a direct conflict between religion and science as methodologies, but given the period of world history that saw the emergence of modern science, the answers to all questions were "why?" According to the clergy, "the religious text says so and so", and since the nature of human beings does not tend to voluntarily cede areas where they have control, even without a right to it, some will undoubtedly have resorted to a "divide and rule" methodology. Or the "new devil" methodology to complete his control. The problem, then, is not in the logic on which the different domains (science and religion) are built themselves, but it is a political problem of ownership.
No interference
Gould, a view consistent with the general idea of those we talked about in this report, argues that science and religion are two distinct, non-overlapping domains, called the principle of “non-overlapping magisteria,” to understand that idea. Through which we can only see things that are red, they can't see any other color, and also imagine that there are other glasses that only see blue things, the world for those glasses is only blue, can either glasses see the other or see things that Works on it other? So we can look at both religion and science, both of which are a way of getting to know the world with different mechanisms of inquiry, which are the essence of each.
Richard Feynman, a well-known physicist and Nobel laureate, held a similar opinion. He once said that "religion is a culture of faith and science is a culture of doubt." To illustrate the function of science, Feynman sets an interesting example. We will assume that the gods above play chess, here on earth we can only see the movements of the pieces. We do not know what that game is and we don't know its rules, but we only - from time to time - see that there is one piece - an elephant - moving in black, and another moving in white.
Scientists' job is to observe the movements of these pieces and to form a picture of them. This image is the laws of physics. For example, we have a physical law that says "the elephant moves in the same color", another says that "the horse moves in the letter L," and so on. Sometimes sudden things happen, such as the process of "overnight", where the king suddenly changes in a way that violates the laws, here scientists change the nature of their questions and the way they see things and emerge new discussions such as: How can the king move two or three steps? Isn't that contrary to what we've learned? How the castle / cob has surpassed the king ?, and so on. Here, Feynman says, it is not the job of science to look beyond the gods above, the source of the pieces, the painting on them or any of them, but only to understand the movements of chess pieces, the nature of their relationships.
| Richard Feynman (networking) |
At that point, Feynman sets an example for a lot of meditation, pointing out that when we hang a spring in a spring it expands, and then we say that "energy" is what pushed the spring to stretch, or to say that "God" did it, both The two sentences are equal! In a clearer sense, from Feynman's point of view, science does not care about defining things, because their definition restricts them, or only restricts our perceptions of them, so when we use the synonyms of "energy" to describe energy we do nothing. Science answers the question: "What are the relationships between Things, where there is energy? " And not the question "What energy?". It's another picture of the previous chess example.
In fact, Feynman also points to another remarkable point when he says that when a scientist tries to answer questions that have nothing to do with science, he is as foolish as the person sitting next to him. That idea is also important, because it relates to scientists who talk about science with faith or atheism. When Dawkins or Hawking, for example, speaks of the existence of God, the public thinks that science denies the existence of God, but that the scientist's departure to talk about such things is a departure from the scientific method to the land of philosophy and religion, which has nothing to do with science itself.
God in the gaps of science
Of the total Nobel laureates in physics between 1900 and 2000, 2% were Hindus, the same percentage of atheists, and the same percentage of Buddhists. Almost all Christian denominations received Nobel prizes in physics; Jews and Muslims received Nobel in physics Mohamed Abdelsalam (Muslim) obtained with Stephen Weinberg (atheist) in 1979. If a specific belief had a clear relationship to science, the problem would have ended.
| Mohamed Abdelsalam (left) (Muslim) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Stephen Weinberg (right) (atheist) in 1979 (websites) |
However, some Arab Muslims are so fascinated by science that they would like to establish Islam through science. The problem is that in the meantime, they try to introduce scientific things, and here we mean specific theories, hypotheses, and research programs, not only in the context of Islamic thought. But to the doctrine itself, it is considered that the conviction of evolution or parallel universes is a departure from the essence of the doctrine that interpreted in a way compatible with his ideas, and considers that the very interesting debates about human nature, whether the scope of the talk about freedom of the will or the origin of good and evil in man, are atheistic Of course just because they touch on AD Scientific topics he put in the Islamic faith!
The big problem that we have always faced with such ideas is that they have a direct adverse effect on people, because this legion crams God into the gaps of science, its uncertain hypotheses and very broad controversies, and every researcher knows very well how much controversy and constant change in his specialty. Science and religion are in direct confrontation that can cause a science-loving student to emerge from either band, and that is a huge loss.
The simple idea, then, is: there are solutions to problems, there are scientists who specialize in their fields do not find a conflict between their Islamic religion and evolutionary biology, or religion and science in general, and this view prevails among the "science and religion", it may seem at first glance contradiction is only confusion In the end, this research scope, which deals with the study of science and religion, contains many important debates, so many differences, and the depth of research that cannot be summed up in a single report, but everyone agrees that human minds have not been able to find consensual solutions that prevent problems. And open the door to the love of science and Yen at the same time, Kfrstin is diametrically opposed to the hopes of this world.